THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: National cyber security advisor Gulshan Rai has expressed concern over government sites being hosted on unsecured servers despite centre's repeated directives for a decade.
He also stressed the need to train people on cyber forensics to tackle the emerging challenges in the field.
“In 2005 and 2007, the Centre issued directives to all states and government agencies to host websites on secured servers within India and conduct frequent security audits. But still many are hosted on private servers with feeble security features and thereby vulnerable to cyber attacks," Mr.
Rai told a section of media on the sidelines of the International Workshop on Cyber Threat Resilience at Technopark.
He also said the State Data Centres in Kerala had good security features and the centre would provide all support for enhancing the state's cyber security capabilities.
"Already, CERT-India is providing support to CERT-Kerala," he said. The workshop was organised in connection with setting up an International Center for Research and Innovation in Cyber Threat Resilience (CRICTR) by the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management -Kerala in association with the Stevens Institute of Technology, USA.
Speaking at the workshop, Mr. Rai stressed the need for training more people on cyber security.
"Technology could only handle about 20 to 50 percent part of cyber security. The rest has to be done by trained people. Also, awareness needs to be generated among people. Hence, institutions like IIITM-K should introduce short term courses for professionals and the general public," he said.
Mr. Rai also said that defacement now became a less significant cyber attack as major incidents like manipulating answer sheets of exams and looting crores from bank accounts were taking place.
IIITM-K chairman M. Madhavan Nambiar said that after the US, India is most vulnerable to cyber threats.
"The number of hacking attempts on Indian sites were 22,000 in 2012. By 2014, it crossed the one lakh mark," he said.
IT principal secretary P. H. Kurian, Stevens Institute of Technology vice-president George P. Korfiatis, IBS chairman V. K. Mathews, IITM-K director Rajasree M. S. and experts in cyber security spoke at various sessions.
